I floated there, frozen in horror, taking it all in. The stricken starship was surrounded by a cloud of smaller ships hovering like gnats, assault craft and shuttles and escape pods and lifeboats. And the smaller ships were surrounded by another cloud, individual E-suits and vac suits and A-suits, some of them launching themselves into the vac, others headed for the ship. Lasers snapped here and there, and luminous bursts of x arced out into the vac as Legion and ConFree troopers shot it out. Two Legion fighters slashed past me, totally silent, icily beautiful, utterly deadly. A titanic, soundless explosion lit up the vac behind me, and I struggled to turn. Something was blazing like a new star, an antimat star filling the heavens, lighting us all up with an unholy glare.
I didn't know what it was. I didn't even care. My eyes turned back to the Star of Dindabai. I fumbled with the steering jets and launched myself gently towards the ship. It was a jumbled mass of wreckage. Which hole had I come out of? I had to find Tara and Whit—alive or dead, I knew I had to find them. But where were they? The closer I came to the torn, tangled wreckage of the ship, the more hopeless it appeared. I was never going to find them!
A ConFree trooper in an A-suit floated out of a gash in the hull. I knew he was ConFree because there was no Legion insignia on his armor. I raised my E and gave him a burst of laser. It burnt right into his armor and he raised his arms stiffly and tumbled away awkwardly, dead. I watched him drift away into the vac, and I felt absolutely nothing—not anger or regret or remorse or guilt or anything at all. There was only an overwhelming sense of fatalism, and fatigue. I knew, in another situation, I might have shared a drink with him, and chatted about girls. But that wasn't the situation we were in. ConFree was attacking the Legion. It was insane. Who the hell did they think they were, to attack the very people who gave their all, every day, to protect ConFree from the System and the O's? Did they think there would be no consequences? Fools! Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Didn't they know it? Fools!
I reached the ship and drifted lazily over an incredible gutted wasteland like an orange vulture cruising for bodies over a landscape of total destruction. How many dead, I wondered, how many good Legionnaires killed by ConFree? I gently touched down on the ship, my momentum pressing me up against the hull. I turned, my back to the hull, and looked out to the vac.
It was so lovely it took my breath away. An endless expanse of stars stretched away before me to infinity, cold and clear, so absolutely glorious, so totally remote, so utterly beautiful that I was struck dumb. It was the face of God. I could hear the music of the stars again, roaring in my mind. My skin was crawling and my blood was ice in my veins. I was a bacterium, I knew, squirming in a drop of water, struggling for life. What did it matter, I thought—what the hell did it matter? Who were we, to object to the word of God? We were fools, trying to cheat time and space, laughing at nature's laws, taking our own back from the bony hands of the Angel of Death. But, by Deadman, we had done it all right! Nobody could deny us that. The Gods were certainly laughing at us now. Everything we had striven for was gone. The Star was gone and the D-neg was about to be annihilated from our universe, along with our lovely ship. And all our comrades, stolen from the past, taken back from the Gods, were now dead or dying. It was all over—we had lost. But we had sure as hell tried! And maybe that was all we needed, on the memorial for Beta Two Four, Second of the Ship, just those two words—"They Tried." And then that final line, earned by all Legion soldiers: "Died in Service."
Two bright soundless eruptions of light caught my attention out in the vac. It was getting very busy around the ship. Fighters darted past at blinding speed and phospho missile trails cut a colorful, complex tracery around them. The Legion fighter force was certainly here, from Dindabai, tracking down ConFree fighters and ships. I could not even see Dindabai. Delta Ochre was a respectable distance from the planet. Dindabai's sun must have been on the other side of the ship. I couldn't find it.
I wondered, vaguely, if ConFree was going to somehow recover the D-neg before the scuttle charges blew it all to hell, but I was not overly concerned about it. Somehow it did not seem particularly important any more. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly weary.
As I floated there motionless another starship appeared, drifting past the Star of Dindabai's shattered bulk. It was a cruiser, and it had been hit, too. It was a shattered wreck, trailing a cloud of debris. I could even read the name, up on the nose—Pride of Alana. My heart gave me a sudden jolt. Pride of Alana! Where had I last seen those words!
A flicker of movement to one side caught my attention. I whipped my E around. An orange E-suit. Someone was emerging from a gap in the hull of the Star of Dindabai, carrying an E.
"Watch yourself," I said on the E-net. "ConFree is shooting anything that moves, and these orange suits don't help much."
"Thinker! Is that you?"
"Valkyrie! Get over here!" I could hardly believe it—Beta Eleven, emerging from the holocaust! She drifted over and I pulled her to me.
"Who's alive?" I demanded.
"I've no idea," she replied. Her pale face was sweaty behind the visor. "I was off duty when it happened. Dragon was on duty. I just barely had time to get into an E-suit before ConFree busted in. I haven't seen anyone else from Beta. It's an awful mess in there."
"Valkyrie, we're going over to that ship—you and me." I gestured to the derelict cruiser. We could see people in E-suits and A-suits abandoning ship. A shuttle broke away from the cruiser. People were hanging onto the outside like fleas on a dog. Laser bursts flickered like lightning, and a few of them drifted away, stricken. Someone was shooting at them from the Star of Dindabai. No mercy, from the Legion. An equal and opposite reaction.
"Why are we going over there, Three?"
"That's the Pride of Alana."
"So what?"
"The Pride of Alana is the ship ConFree took us to when they captured us on Andrion Two."
"It is? How do you know that? I never knew its name."
"I saw the insignia on a dox cup, when we were inside. That's Lowdrop's ship, and Lowdrop's here. I've talked to him!"
"Deadman!" Her green eyes blazed. A massive chunk of twisted metal debris drifted past us, and I knew the Gods were giving us one last chance to strike back at our enemies. I knew Deadman was just toying with us, but I didn't care. One last chance! I reached out and pulled the wreckage to me. It looked like a section of an internal bulkhead. It was our chariot, I thought, our suicide ship—a gift from the Gods.
"We've got transportation, Eleven. Are you coming?" I crawled onto one end of the structure.
"Try and stop me!" Valkyrie attached herself to the other end. It doesn't take much to move around in zero G. A touch of the jets from my E-suit and we were drifting towards the Pride of Alana, huddled against the wreckage. With luck, we'd look like just another chunk of orbiting debris, and ConFree would be too busy to notice the two orange bacteria, hitching a ride.
***
"Heads up, Valkyrie! Inner lock door opening…now!" We were in an airlock on the Pride of Alana, seemingly ignored. The ship had grav, and the bridge and a considerable portion of the inner core were still pressurized. We were about to join whoever was still in there. The inner airlock door snapped open suddenly and we stepped out gingerly behind our E's. We found ourselves in a large vac suit locker. E-suits and V-suits lined the walls but the place was completely deserted, seemingly untouched by the attack.
We glided through there like two shadows, without a word, and paused by the open corridor door. A wisp of smoke hung outside, a gentle hint of the horror that was raging through the ship. We could hear the transmissions now, assaulting our ears, a terrifying blend of grimly shouted commands, cries for help, pleas for mercy and the shrieks of the dying. I tried to ignore it.
"Let it be…" Valkyrie prayed.
"Doubtful," I replied. "But we can try. Cover me!" I rolled into the corridor and took a position against the opposite wall. The E-suits had commo but no tacmods. We
were at a serious disadvantage. Valkyrie joined me and we crept forward. The exterior of the ship had been peeled away like an onion, but here everything seemed normal.
"Help me…" A ConFree crewman in a litesuit, chest-down on the deck, trembling in a pool of blood, raising a pale, frightened face, trying to hold in his guts with scarlet hands. We stepped past him carefully, ignoring his plea. All I could feel right then was an icy rage, and it had nothing to do with the ConFree crewman.
Now the corridor was shot up like shredded cheese, riddled and smoking. We came upon two great A-suited figures, glowing and crackling on the deck, tangled together, almost in each other's arms. One was Legion, from our own Strike Force, the other was ConFree. Both were dead.
We continued, past OQ, past the rec rooms, past Stores, past OM…closer and closer to the bridge. There were a lot of bodies and the tacnet was frightening. The Legion must have entered unopposed through the airlocks during the confusion of the evac. It was stupid to fight at that point, but ConFree had chosen to fight.
"It sounds like the Legion's in control," Valkyrie said.
"I believe you're right," I replied. "Strike Force, we're two survivors from the Star of Dindabai, approaching the bridge. We're in E-suits. Don't fire, all right? Have you secured the bridge?"
"Survivors, SF. We've got the bridge. We've got you on tacmap. Feel free."
The pressure door to the bridge was open. Two Legion strikers in black A-suits were bending over a stricken comrade as other armored troopers dragged the dead and wounded away. The bridge was burning. Legion soldiers moved around in the flames while ConFree prisoners crawled out of the bridge into the corridor under close guard. Some of them were in vac suits, some were in E-suits, but all were helmetless. Those who had been in armor had been stripped to their fatigues, totally unprotected. The deck was slick with blood.
"He's dead, sir." The Legion striker continued to embrace his dead comrade. The other trooper rose slowly and looked around. Then he stepped over to the disorderly sprawl of ConFree prisoners stretched out face-down on the deck.
"The ones in fatigues were in armor?" he asked quietly. I recognized the voice—it was Dragon! He was standing over one of the prisoners now, aiming his E at the back of the man's skull.
"Dragon! It's Thinker and Valkyrie! Where are the others?"
"Three. Eleven." He turned to face us, but his eyes were somewhere else. "Glad you survived. I don't know about the others. You'd better get on the shuttle. The Star of Dindabai is going up soon. Excuse me." He fired a single round of x into the ConFree prisoner's skull. I jumped back, startled. The other prisoners were begging, pleading, crying for their lives.
"We're with the Legion!" someone shouted. "We're just like you!"
"You're not like us," Dragon said, moving over to another fatigue-clad prisoner. "You're not anything like us." A third prisoner started to scramble to his feet. He was shot down immediately by a Legion trooper. His blood spattered over my faceplate. The echoes of the x were deafening in that enclosed space and the shrieking of the prisoners was like the howl of souls being cast into Hell.
"Dragon, what are you doing?" I finally managed to stammer. "Why are you shooting these prisoners? They're not resisting—it's a war crime! The Legion will execute you!"
"They killed six of us in the assault," Dragon replied calmly. "They offered to surrender, then turned on us. I'll take no more prisoners." He took aim at another cringing ConFree striker.
"Dragon, stop!" Valkyrie shouted. "We want to examine these prisoners! Give us a few fracs."
"Fine," Dragon said, "but make it quick. We've got to get out of here."
We looked at every one. It was pretty awful. They were all looking death in the face. One of them was a female, paralyzed with fear. She was in an E-suit, so maybe she wouldn't die. I tried not to think about it.
Valkyrie found him face-down next to the corridor wall. She pulled his head up by the hair, and his pale sweaty face was twitching with terror.
"Two Four One!" I said, thrusting the barrel of my E into his face. "Fancy that!" He was clad in fatigues. We cuffed him and hauled him to his feet.
"Mind if we borrow this one?" Valkyrie asked.
"Are you going to kill him?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead." We pulled Lowdrop roughly along the corridor. Another shot echoed behind us.
"Do you remember where it was?" I asked.
"I know exactly where it was," Valkyrie replied.
We found it and forced Lowdrop into the room. Bobo was wild, frenzied, almost out of his mind, howling, shrieking, banging at the bars of his cage, driven to distraction by the strange noises and vibrations that were rippling through the ship.
I fired vac into the back of Lowdrop's legs. He screamed and fell face first to the deck.
"Hello, Bobo," Valkyrie said. "Remember me?" Bobo seized the bars with two massive hands and roared, spitting fury, bristling with hatred.
"Aww…what's wrong?" Valkyrie asked. "Is it a little cranky this morning? No sex last night? Well, we can fix that, Bobo." Valkyrie turned to Lowdrop and pulled a cold knife from the E-suit's survival pak. I kicked Lowdrop over onto his back. He stared at us wildly, glancing over at Bobo's cage with unconcealed terror. Valkyrie reached down with the knife and ripped his fatigue tunic open, leaving a trail of blood on his chest. Lowdrop finally found his voice.
"Don't do it, kids!" he gasped. "Listen to me! You've got the most important prisoner in Legion history! Turn me over to Two Two One! He wants me more than anything else in the world! All his problems are solved with me as a prisoner. Your damned Lost Command's problems are solved as well! My presence here is irrefutable proof that he was right, and Kenton Cotter-Arc was lying to the ConFree Council when he said the problem would be resolved peaceably. You don't want to put me in that cage. You want to hand me over to Two Two One! He'll give you anything you want! Wealth, power, security—anything!"
Valkyrie brought the knife down to Lowdrop's trousers, ripping them open.
"What are you doing?" Lowdrop shrieked. "Are you crazy? I'm proof of KCA's aggression! Two Two One will be overjoyed to hear I'm a prisoner! He'll be enraged if anything happens to me! Take me to him! Don't you understand? This will change the balance of power in the Galaxy! The Con Free Council will probably execute KCA, and forgive the LC. It'll change history!" He was almost naked now, his fatigues in shreds. Valkyrie bent over him and gave him a chill smile.
"We don't care about that," she said. "We just want to see you die." His eyes widened and his face froze into a slab of ice, almost like rigor mortis. We dragged him roughly over the deck to the cage. Bobo had calmed down a little. He was watching Lowdrop with fascination. He knew what it meant when somebody's clothes came off. Bobo was terrifying if you were about to go into his cage, but I didn't hate him. I felt very, very sorry for him. The one I hated was Lowdrop.
"Give me a hand with this door," Valkyrie said. It was a double door of cenite bars. We got the outer door open. Bobo waited patiently behind the inner door. Lowdrop was paralyzed, unable even to speak. I hauled him to his feet and looked into his terrified eyes.
"By the way," I said. "We're not kids." I released his cuffs, shoved him into the cage, and locked the outer door behind him. Bobo was drooling and whimpering urgently. Valkyrie hit the control and the inner door snapped open. Lowdrop screamed. And I did not feel the slightest spark of pity or regret, then or afterwards.
***
We paused in the tangled wreckage of the Pride of Alana's outer fuselage, back in the vac again. We carefully emerged from a twisted, ragged hole, blinking at a larger world. Our crude life raft was still there, secured to the ship just where we had left it.
I had not even returned to the scene on the bridge. It was terminally depressing. This was not the way I had wanted things to end, with Dragon gunning down ConFree prisoners in cold blood, and Valkyrie and I feeding Lowdrop to a savage beast. It was not supposed to end this way at all. We were going out in
a futile, mindless spasm of violence, striking out blindly at everything in one last, hopeless protest.
The shattered hulk of the Star of Dindabai glittered coldly against a magnificent field of crisp stars. The shooting had stopped, and the only activity I could see was shuttles and lifeboats and escape pods, heading briskly away from the Star of Dindabai. From this distance, the ship's skin was like a checkerboard. A whole fleet of escape pods had separated from the ship, leaving gaping holes behind. Valkyrie was beside me now, silent. We had not exchanged a word since the cage. I glanced at my chron. Nineteen marks to Armageddon, for the Star of Dindabai. Dragon was right, I thought sadly. We all die, just like he predicted back on the Stardust. He was a visionary, I thought. It must be terrifying to have such a clear view of the future. No wonder he had ice in his veins.
"I'm going back," I sighed, reaching for our improvised raft. "You want to come?" What a shame, I thought. What a damned shame, after all we did, to die like this, like bacteria.
"Sure," Valkyrie said listlessly. We clambered onto the chunk of wreckage and I pushed us off the Pride of Alana with one foot.
***
It didn't take too long to get back to the Star of Dindabai. Fourteen marks to annihilation, I noted as my mag soles touched the skin of the ship. I let our improvised lifeboat drift away into space. It was obvious we were going to die here, and there was no sense in fooling ourselves. Valkyrie was at my side as we picked our way carefully around the holes in the ship's skin. The E-net was busy, although most of the rescue craft and lifeboats had already fled the scene.
We came across a group of Legion soldiers in A-suits, standing in evident frustration in a crumpled mass of cenite fuselage that had telescoped in upon itself.
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